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Oct 1, 2024 | 
asia.nikkei.com | Yumiko Oshima
TOKYO -- Domestic consumption in Japan is showing signs of recovering from the effects of inflation, according to quarterly economic data released Tuesday, though the persistent shortage of workers remains a downside risk. In the September edition of the Bank of Japan's Tankan survey of business sentiment, the category for accommodations, eating and drinking services had a diffusion index of 52, matching the record high reached in March.
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May 29, 2024 | 
asia.nikkei.com | Yumiko Oshima
TOKYO -- Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group plans to build its holdings of Japanese government bonds back up if the Bank of Japan raises interest rates in earnest, the head of the global markets business group told Nikkei. The BOJ "may raise its policy interest rate to around 0.25% as early as July," Hiroyuki Seki said in an interview.
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Apr 23, 2024 | 
asia.nikkei.com | Yumiko Oshima
TOKYO -- Policymakers at the Bank of Japan are expected to focus on the effects of a rapidly weakening yen on inflation at their two-day meeting starting Thursday as speculation swirls on the timing of the BOJ's next rate hike. This will be the first policy board gathering since the bank raised interest rates for the first time in 17 years in March to end its negative interest rate policy.
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Apr 19, 2024 | 
asia.nikkei.com | Juntaro Arai |Kosuke Takami |Yumiko Oshima
WASHINGTON/TOKYO -- A yen sell-off and its effect on inflation loom large over the Bank of Japan less than a week before its first policy board meeting since ending negative interest rates in March. The central bank has signaled that it will weigh the impact of its first rate hike in 17 years and wage trends before making further policy changes.
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Dec 27, 2023 | 
asia.nikkei.com | Yumiko Oshima
TOKYO -- Bank of Japan policy board members are divided on whether to start unwinding its ultra-easy monetary policy in the spring or earlier, discussions from this month's meeting show. Conflicting views of the members shown in a summary of the Dec. 18-19 meeting, released Wednesday, signal that the bank sees policy normalization on the horizon.
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Dec 5, 2023 | 
asia.nikkei.com | Yumiko Oshima |Saki Akita
TOKYO -- Liquidity in the Japanese bond market has "generally worsened" as a result of the Bank of Japan's decade-long extreme monetary easing, according to BOJ talking points for a broad policy review. The reports, prepared by BOJ officials, said the three adjustments made by the BOJ to its yield curve control policy since December 2022 in response to side effects have improved the situation.
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Nov 28, 2023 | 
asia.nikkei.com | Yumiko Oshima
TOKYO -- The Bank of Japan's unrealized losses on its Japanese government bond holdings swelled to 10.5 trillion yen ($71.2 billion) at the end of September, according to financial statements released Tuesday, as rising yields dragged down bond prices. This marked the central bank's third straight half-year paper loss on JGBs, and the largest since it began valuing them under its current method in 2004, smashing the previous record of 874.9 billion yen set in September 2022.
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Nov 16, 2023 | 
asia.nikkei.com | Yumiko Oshima |Tamayo Muto
TOKYO -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission faces "a difficult and challenging decision" on proposed rules for climate risk disclosures, Commissioner Mark Uyeda said Wednesday, as the process takes longer than first expected. Regarding the climate information, the securities regulator will weigh "the trade off between the costs of what we're going to propose to collect and publish... versus the benefits to investors and to the market as a whole," Uyeda said in an interview here.
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Nov 9, 2023 | 
asia.nikkei.com | Yumiko Oshima
TOKYO -- The Bank of Japan is moving closer to a departure from its long-standing ultraloose policy, a summary of opinions from its latest meeting in October suggests, with policymakers calling for a smooth path toward normalization. The BOJ must communicate with the market in preparation for a "world where interest rates exist," according to a summary of opinions published Thursday, "with the future exit from the current monetary policy in mind."
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Sep 1, 2023 | 
biorxiv.org | Mariusz Karbowski |Nicolas Verhoeven |Yumiko Oshima |Etienne Cartier-Zamorano
AbstractPeroxisome de novo biogenesis requires yet unidentified mitochondrial proteins. We report that the outer mitochondrial membrane (OMM)-associated E3 Ub ligase MARCH5 is vital for generating mitochondria-derived pre-peroxisomes. MARCH5 knockout results in accumulation of immature peroxisomes and lower expression of various peroxisomal proteins.
